Month: August 2012

Whether we call it conscious creation or manifestation, both are merely referring to intention arising from the mind. And as the Buddha puts it succinctly – cetana is karma; literally to mean intention arrives result – every act of intention is continuing us to the next moment of our experience, whether we like it or not.

Intention, unnoticeable many a times, is what propels our thought, speech and action all the time. There is no one moment we are not propelled by intention, so long as we are awake. And that means we are constantly creating or manifesting all the time, moment to moment, in seconds, albeit unconsciously. The truth is that it is not us per se that is doing the creation or intention, but rather the presence of ignorance that is relating to each past conditioning. So long as wisdom is not at hand, to mean the discerning mind in recognizing ignorance at work, what we are experiencing each moment of non-realization, will be the result of ignorance intending.

Hence to create consciously is to mean having the wakefulness of wisdom to create. And that can only arise when we are consciously aware that ignorance is working – believing, and perceiving from past conditioning; and upon noticing it, one consciously create anew, not rejecting or resisting what ignorance is doing, but rather creating in parallel to it. Notice that each time we asked for something, which is to mean intent, we are not intending anew, but rather fixing what we do not like. When we do this we are perpetuating what ignorance is already doing – a matter of fact compounding what is already there. When we like something and wish more of it, we are also intending from ignorance, considering that we are liking something of the past rather than creating anew what we wish to experience. There was never an opportunity for a parallel reality hence what is already there has to perpetuate.

Consider this scene which I find relevant to share. Imagine I am working on getting a new house and there is much to do with beautifying it. So I go window shopping, getting furniture and fittings that will create the house that I wish to experience. Many a times there is a fear lingering at the background of the mind of how much the total cost of renovation it may entails. If you imagine this scene you may have wondered what intention am I creating each moment. The mechanic of creation is this – if I have, say, a 100 thousand dollar to spent on fittings, each moment as I look at the cost of each product, I am calculating what is there for me. It means that I am intending from limitation, rather than intending from what I wish to experience. Not that one is better than the other, except that whatever I intent, I have to experience its result later on.

Do bear in mind “money” is simply an exchange and not something that you have, though in illusion, it is what you have “accumulated”. But in truth what you have accumulated is merely a perception of value, not more of that. Thus, when you look from the eyes of whatever meaning of value, you are already creating consciously or unconsciously from that space. If you are merely valuing what you wish to experience, putting aside the cost that is limiting your value, you will be surprised by the result which comes to you later. And if you are valuing the amount of money you have, you will have to experience the result of that value too. Remember, the mind is all you have, and that is what you have to experience!

Recently I met a friend who has also shifted into a new home and he told me that the cost of renovation was never in his mind and he just proposed to the contractor what he wished to experience. To his amazement, weeks down the road, the project he got supports what he needed for the new home.

To recapitulate, if I wish to buy, say a handphone, I am intending on the beauty of the phone rather than the meaning of budget I have in mind. When I intend on the budget, I am intending from a space of limiting possibility, hence what I get is simply limiting. To a logical mind, that is what it is – we don’t do things out of our budget – and to go against it is insanity and disastrous! No, I am not requesting one to go against what the mind has already portrayed or intended. Rather, I am inviting one to realize what the mind is already intending, and seeing its limitation, start intending from a new space of what one wish to experience and just go for it. When you are doing this you are not trying to fix what is already here but to create a new parallel reality. Both are intention, one from ignorance of the past, the other, wisdom of the now – and let the future unfold according to what one intend consciously or unconsciously from the now. Try it out on little things and see the result that comes to you.

There is no mistake of what comes in the future. What you get is what you intent, either from ignorance or wisdom. Period. No one to blame, not even oneself – except to realize there is no victimization or victim at any point of a moment, except whether one is awake or not.

The mind is in your hand – use it for liberation rather than being bonded by it.

Imagine a scene : the mouth of a sewer pipe extending out from the cliff. At the very edge of the mouth is the beginning of what comes out of it – the very experience that is unavoidable and irresistible when it happens. What comes out is literally a processed process, a continuum of experiences, that of what comes through the mouth at each moment, non-ending so to speak, so long as the pipe is there to serve its purpose.

Yet, the pipe and what comes out from the pipe is two different matter altogether. Irrelevant to what is oozing out from the pipe, the pipe does not complaint or can it be affected by what is coming through; neither can the pipe affect or influence what is coming out. What is oozing out, and what is holding the oozing out are both simply nature doing its work.

The nature of sewer can be smelly, petrifying, dirty or sometimes just affluent water flowing through. Anything can come out of the pipe depending what is being introduced to it. The sewer is merely an end product of what has been ingested, digested and finally excreted into the sanitary system that lands itself into the pipe. Whereas for the pipe, its’ nature is non judgmental – giving its space for what comes through it. It neither complaints nor rejects, no matter what is going through it. Unaffected, the pipe just does the work that is been given. The pipe does not experience. The sewer too does not experience. Both are just nature taking its place. To notice both of these as nature is simply wisdom unfolding. To resist them, not seeing their realities, is delusion at work.

This is the metaphor of the mind. What comes up in each of us, at each moment, be it perception or feelings, are results of what views or ideas we have run in our system through times immemorial. Unchecked, unquestioned, due to forgetfulness or heedlessness, as opposing to awareness or wakefulness, all sorts of ideas or views mould the way we look at the world, hence we have to experience what results from it. It oozes out from our mind every moment, conditioned by situations, events, or anything for that matter, hence making it our experience in each moment. Many a times it is unpleasant, for that we are constantly reacting through attachment and resistance to the experiences. When we react, we are conditioning the mind to be as such in the future, hence repeating the vicious cycle.

When we wake up to the mind, awakened to what is truly happening, we come to realize there is actually nothing wrong with what is coming through the mind except nature of past conditioning replaying its results again and again. Our conditioned ideas and views are what oozes out from the mind in our moment to moment experience, like the sewer. The pipe is like the mind making that experience possible. Delusion or ignorance is the interference that perpetuates the process further. And wisdom is to wake up to what is, ending the process of ideas and views, slowly but surely, when non interference replaces resistance and holding on, hence ending whatever dance that perpetuates the oozing.

And Love is the meeting of the Lover with the Beloved – wakeful acceptance to what is, in full embrace, in love. And when the process comes into culmination, into completion, the Lover and the Beloved becomes one, in unity, in Oneness, no longer separated from each other. It is then, God is realized – both Lover and Beloved a mere reflection of each other.

To each moment, in the spiritual path to Awakening, is the space of either forgetfulness or wakefulness. You are either absent or present to what is in the Now. Both cannot occur concurrently.

“What is in the Now” is not what you are experiencing, but rather how the mind is experiencing it. When you are in the experience, it is when you are in the space of Absence – you got identified, entangled in it. It does not matter whether you are identified with your thoughts and feelings or with what is out there. You’ve lost yourself at that moment, so to speak and taken in to what the mind has conjured.

Whereas when you take notice that what is in the Now is simply how the mind is relating to each experience, that the mind has a nature of its own, doing its time, you are now Present to that.

Only when you are awake can you see the reality of your mind, the great conjuror that makes all your experiences seemingly real. Absence to the mind only makes what is unreal real. Thus when you are stressed by an event or situation outside your control, you think it is that thing that is causing you the stress. The matter of fact is that the world cannot give you stress except your mind’s relationship to it. Thus what is thought or felt real is merely conjured by the mind, by its relationship to it. When you don’t have the wisdom to see this reality, you may try to change your relationship but that does not work as your mind’s nature of relationship to each issue is something pretty ancient to your space. It is being built up and conditioned by the past of Absence – where holding on or resistance is the way it responded accumulatively.

Thus, when you are able to notice the pattern clearly as not yours, but simply ancient, that is when the Great Masters like Jesus, QuanYin, Archangels or any Bodhisattas become important to your space. You can request from them assistance to clear those patterns. Not that their presence to your life is necessary but they are simply helpful in providing you the guidance in assisting you to accelerate and transcend all the old patterns once and for all. You are in actuality able to transcend all those patterns with wisdom for them to be uprooted entirely. But it is also potentially possible not to wait for those moments but to trust what you realize is sufficient for it to be transcended. Your only job is to no longer see those nature as necessary and also not truly “you” but merely old conditioning playing itself up again and surrendering or rather giving them up to the Masters whose function is to support you in that. For that is what they are offering you irrelevant whether you are a believer in them or not. Your only job is to trust their presence and what they can do for you – surrendering these patterns to them what is no longer necessary in your mind. Explore for yourself – do not take what is written here at face value. Your experience will bring you to your realization of their potential in your spiritual journey. You can only realized it by yourself, alone – hence whatever doubt, be it of your own or others can only be resolved through direct experience.

In accelerating your journey of awakening, your only job in this lifetime is to be aware, to take notice of the nature of the mind, without any meaning of self in it, transient, and merely doing time, until you wake up to it. Then Mara, or the illusionist of the mind, will not bring you back to experience it again and again, lifetime after lifetime. :)

There is this magical ring
an invisible doorway you call Now
where past conditioning comes to arise
and perception takes precedent
of ignorance or wisdom
with followup of feelings
hence new ideas are created
perpetuating new conditioning
either for karma to continue
or to finally end

Thus within this ring
is where great potentials are
where past conditioning comes to arise
with ignorance continuing it
or wisdom ending its dance

The Now moment so, so, precious
to die and to be born again
generously being offered repeatedly to you
for a bane or a boon
for you to to sleep once again
or to wakeup once and for all
and thus Samsara or Nibbana comes to be.

There is no world. There is only your relationship with the world. Without you the world does not exist on its own. Your suffering is in your relationship. Not the world. If you give attention to your relationship, without the world in the picture for the moment, you are now relating to your relationship. Your relationship with the world is one, your relationship to that relationship is another altogether. When we give our attention to the way we relate with the world, the journey of awareness or mindfulness begins.

We begin to notice the dysfunctional pattern of that relationship. We don’t notice it in the beginning as our attention is towards the world, rather than towards our relationship with the world. Our ability to notice the way we relate with the world is the only intimate relationship we have with ourselves. We can be having a loving or hateful relationship outside of us, to mean the world, and we think those are the best or worst relationships we have ever had with the world; yet when we get closer to how we relate with the world, we will be amazed and surprised by the fact that there is truly no relationship with the world except the way we relate to it.

How we relate gives us the meaning of love or hate. It just ends there and has never gone out to the world. The world is only exactly reflecting this relationship and makes you think there is someone or something outside there to get, to reject, to have. It is a big delusion and madness of ignorance. As J puts it beautifully – nothing can be hidden unless you ignore it and what is seen cannot be hidden anymore.

Your relationship with the world is hidden from you simply because you are not observing the obvious except the look at the world without “your relationship” to it. When “your relationship” to it is not being taken notice, ignorance breeds like wild fire. You think there is something out there that you can be attached to or to resist, yet there is nothing except the way you relate to it. Thus the Buddha was wise when he pointed out that suffering is when you resist what you are getting and you want what you don’t get. The truth in this profound statement is not what you think it is, perceiving that what comes to you is what you have to accept since there is no way you can reject or resist it, though in the form level it seems to be true.

But the reality is that nothing actually comes to you. Do you say the floor comes to you? Do you say the garden comes to you? Nothing comes to you except your relationship to it. When you relate to it personally it seems like it is attacking you or defending you. That is what special relationship is all about. You don’t give special relationship to the road you travel on except the destination you are attending to – that is your special relationship; unless the road has a big pothole and you got into it. At that moment you have a special relationship to it and it can be hell! Otherwise, everything is merely passing by all the time. Hence you are merely a passerby if you wish to be happy. Otherwise when you give meaning to it, as in relating to it personally, you have to eat what you give to it.

Your relationship is where clinging occurs. Without that specialness, life is merely a show, a movie just as nature comes and goes. No right or wrong except what is being presented to you, like the roads, the trees, wind, house etc. Can you too relate it in this manner when you take notice of your relationship with the world? Your relationship with the world is just nature of the past doing its time again and again until you wakeup to it and no longer give it due power. Only then the world becomes your space of compassion, for love to exist, for peace to be experienced – all within, and without, the capsule of the mind.

The world is an amazing matrix of balance. A balance that is so natural and effortless that no conscious effort is required from anyone to hold it in balance. Though in the level of physical form, certain laws, obediences and restraints are required to make sure things are in conformity so as not to tip the balance of social norms and personal needs, yet that manmade act of so-called balance is in fact an imbalance itself that will somehow takes on its own natural course of balance or correction in due course.

There is a bigger natural state of Balance occurring at all times, each moment, each second of our lives that is beyond our slightest awareness. Even the act of awareness is being Balance on its own, naturally. And when we don’t acknowledged that Balance, we play the role of control freak in being a big brother in fixing situations or events that we felt is right so that the direction of the outcome is exactly what we desired. Often than not that act of so-called balance is more of enforcement created by self-cherishing thoughts that serves the inflation of the ego. Yet that is fine too as that unconscious act itself will somehow be balanced by Balance.

Look not too far outside the world, except our own minds and we will be startled to realize many of our unnoticed intentions and motivations has that big brother mentality of control freak within. Many a times it may not manifest itself as action or even speech but stayed lingering in the mind as upsets. Lets be truthful about this – we are all on the same boat facing these stuffs in varied forms all of the time, not knowing. And when we do not know, the Balance itself will take its own course and that one day will make us realize that what we do is futile to our own peace.

The Balance is not someone “up there” or something that plays the role of punishing or pardoning, but rather a natural act of nature taking its own course. We can only perceive it as “someone up there” when we ourselves play that role of control and thus project it outside that surely there is someone larger or apart than us doing that – it is simply a reflection of what is within us.

The Balance, or sometimes called the Tao, is a force beckoning us to realize, to wake up to it, so that every act of our own is aligning to it, so as not to tip the imbalance that will result in its own balance – pain. Pain or suffering is a very good indicator of faith that somewhere Balance is balancing the imbalance of the ego movement.

The next time lookout at your perceived idea that propels motivation and intention – and you can find in it a natural course of Balance coming back to you in a resultant form. And that Only You will experience it alone in whatever form it takes. Until you wake up to this state of Balance, of cause and effect, you will keep erroring, but that is fine too!

Meeting Myself

This blog is about the mind story – my intimate relationship with the mind. And the stories evolve around my own spiritual growth which includes my own shortcomings, observations and understanding.

Interestingly it was recognizing arrogance that propels me to look at spirituality from a different light, beginning from the Buddha’s teaching to other faith, seeing profound similarities in them. Arrogance swings me from one end of polarity to the other end, humility. And again, only in recognizing both ends was I able to come to my own balance state, the middle path. Both ends have extreme interpretations of good and bad whereas the centre has its understanding of both. The recognition I am talking about is wisdom in working, found in each and everyone of us, when we allow.

And my journey is still evolving and refining, bringing myself back again and again, consistently, allowing wisdom to unfold in me, from extremity to the middle path of non-judgment and non-violence, seeing the world as my own creation and definition.

May you find yourself in these readings and come into your inner peace and freedom.

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Quantum physics defies what Newtonian physics is all about. At the molecular level, the entire game changes. In fact it is totally in opposition to what is.

The same goes with the mind. The world I perceived outwardly is not exactly what I thought it is - a different set of rules reign within.